Communicating Sustainability on Social Media: a Study on Leading Turkish and Global Brands in Turkey

Abstract

This study explores leading brands' sustainability-themed communication messages on social media, considering the impacts of brand value and industry types from a country of origin and triple-bottom-line perspectives. An across-stage mixed-model research design is used in the study. Firstly, sustainability-themed messages on corporate Facebook accounts of leading 62 Turkish and 31 global brands in Turkey were analyzed by using content analysis. Then, regression, one-way Anova, and chi-square analyses were performed for the quantified data. The results show that (a) brand value is not a significant driver of communicating sustainability-themed messages on social media; (b) economic sustainability is emphasized more than environmental and social dimension in social media messages of global brands, whereas Turkish brands highlight social responsibility; and (c) there are differences among industry sectors in terms of communicating messages about economic dimension of sustainability within leading Turkish brands. Sustainability communication on social media was examined in the context of corporate Facebook messages. This issue needs to be further explored considering different social media platforms. It is implied that leading brands in emerging markets need to understand the connection between sustainability dimensions, not only meet expectations but also stimulate interests of key stakeholders by communicating all aspects of sustainability in a nested approach. This study generates a more in-depth and nuanced understanding of sustainability communication of leading brands on social media by conducting a multidimensional investigation that considers the effects of country of origin and industrial differences in an emerging market context.